


Sirius in the City

by wellthatsood



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Grimmauld Place, Growing Up, London, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 09:19:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1171367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wellthatsood/pseuds/wellthatsood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study of Sirius Black, the place of his birth, and the changes of both over his lifetime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sirius in the City

Sirius is born in the city, amongst noise and chaos. He was born without a backyard, born hearing the street and breathing cigarette smoke. He knows to expect shouting from outside, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, as drunken revelers pass. He learns to ignore it, just as he ignores his mother’s complaints when the cars start honking, when the loud rev of a motorcycle reverberates passed the sitting room, which irks her most.  

“Reckless, those muggles. And fools. They deserve the early grave that’s coming to them.”  

He comes to expect the mechanical wailing noise— sirens, he learns. Sirius doesn’t know why muggles use that noise, but he knows what it means, that someone is having a terrible night. Despite what his mother says, Sirius feels sad when he hears sirens, because he can’t understand why anyone would deserve an early grave, or a fire, or getting locked up.  

There’s a park down the street and Sirius would very much like to play on it, but he isn’t allowed. No Black will be on that vile, dirty thing, his parents say. It doesn’t look dirty to Sirius, but he stays inside and wrestles Regulus in the upstairs drawing room that no one ever uses. Stop all that thumping, they’re ordered. They can’t thump in drawing room and they can’t go to the park. Sirius and Regulus were born heirs, not boys.  

Sirius escapes the city and finds freedom, amidst the stonework and turrets and solitude of mountains and forests. He does not miss his parents, but he misses the noise. So he makes new noise, makes ruckus with the other boys-not-heirs.  

The air smells different. He explores, every indoor cranny and every outdoor landscape. He’s never been among so many trees at one time, never been allowed to romp in pine needles and dead leaves and branches and dirt and mud. He comes to love the mud, when it rains. Earthen mud is different from city mud, which is black and tar and made of pebbled murk. This new mud is pure and he loves to track it inside on the bottoms of his shoes, because there’s no mother to reprimand him for what could happen to her good carpet.  

Here, he finds himself. He grows taller and he grows a beard— a dark, wispy thing, that really just obscures his face and itches. He makes new brothers. He makes plans. Together, they go through growth spurts and talk about sex and boast about dates. Sirius doesn’t want to follow the rules, doesn’t think he was ever meant to, and comes to prefer the feel of stubble under his thumb, even when most boys speak of soft cheeks.  

He must go home eventually, to the hot and the stink that he never noticed before. Sirius stares out of windows and dreams of freedom. He spends hot July days digging his trainers into the dirt, twisting round and round, pulling the chains of the swing into tight loops. He spins, and the world becomes a rush of grey. There’s graffiti on the slide— obscene things, vulgar words, all colorful and brazen and somehow preferable to the ancient, stern portraits that line the upstairs hallway. He knows what the words mean now, and he adds a few of his own, leaving the marker on the cracked cement beside the long-extinguished nubs of old cigarettes.  

He grows up; he grows out his hair. He buys a motorcycle and keeps it parked down the street, around the corner, hidden and ought of sight.  

He goes for long walks at bad hours. He looks for fights, gets into fights, because the fights with other boys in back alleys are easier than the fights at home. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he doesn’t. He always returns bruised, cut, and feeling better.  

James sends packages of random things— sweets, trinkets, garbage, all to make him smile. Remus sends weekly letters. Peter sends postcards from various locations, while on holiday with his mother, who always stays in the hotel to get work done.  

Once, Remus comes to London, and he and Sirius walk to the river. They sit on a bench until it gets dark, but it doesn’t really ever get dark, not in the city. The sky is always grey-purple, at most. There are few stars here. On clear nights, there’s only the brightest star and the moon. This makes Sirius smile when he’s sitting with Remus, who was not on holiday, but gone to the Ministry to register as half-breed. Remus doesn’t see the symbolism in the sky, but he appreciates the light pollution and the fingers that enclose his own.  

It’s a bad night when Sirius realizes that he cannot stay. Dishes are broken and voices are raised, and the slow-spreading fissure finally erupts; Sirius slams the door. He regrets nothing but the look of indifference on his brother’s face. Even after all these years, he still expects that Regulus will beg him to stay, will raise his voice to their parents, will stand by Sirius’s side, as when they were boys, defending one another from punishment if a vase were broken in play or crumbs were left on a nice armchair. Regulus says nothing.  

In the country, Sirius can proudly park his motorcycle in front of the house. The air is always fresh. He helps Mrs. Potter with the garden, because he longs to be useful, to repay the enormous debt through a good crop of carrots and a bouquet of hyacinth. He swears he’ll never go back to the city again, not to them, anyway. He spends a few, sweet holidays finally feeling like someone’s loved and wanted son. The haze of summer humidity engulfs him, but he does not suffocate, as he reclines in cool grass and watches the clouds, the sunsets, the constellations, as he fills his fingernails with dirt. There’s a new canvas above him, and Sirius relishes his time beneath it.  

But the thrum of the city runs through his veins. It seeps through his blood— irremovable, alive even as it decays— and it draws him back. Sirius returns to the city when he’s older, once he’s graduated. For the first time, he’s willing. He can’t afford it— not his flat, nor the elevated food prices. His inheritance is too small and Remus’s uncertain paycheck is smaller. Somehow, that’s part of the appeal. The city seems to not want him, which only makes Sirius work harder to pay the rent. Their flat is cramped, dingy, and has one bedroom— not that they need another.  

Sirius needs the noise, and the grit, like a blanket.  

“It’s nice,” says Remus when they move in, but Remus is country and flinches at every drunken shout from outside. 

Sirius smokes out the window. Remus tries to find calm in the bottom of a mug. Sirius is too used to sirens to hear them.  

It’s safer here. The city has always been at war, but the country has been invaded by new fear. Everything has changed; the disappearances, the deaths, the raids and the fights and the desperation seeps into everywhere. But Sirius tells himself it’s better in the city; it’s just the way it’s always been. He can’t live in the stillness, where every sound would send him jumping and running, where there are so few people that he could be easy to track home and kill. The city is crowded, and although he stares suspiciously into every face on the street, the density is like a tight, reassuring embrace. He’s one among thousands.  

But they find him still, weed their way from the inside out. What happens in his flat, in his bedroom, makes no difference between city and country, and he resumes his habit of taking long walks. He no longer seeks fights, and instead relishes the freedom of street after street, of being surrounded by so many people, while not a soul in the world knows where he is. It’s dangerous, and only makes him love the busy solitude all the more.  

And then, the freedom is gone and the solitude crushes him. The city is gone. He is taken from it, never to be seen again. Everything is still walls and grey, but it isn’t familiar and it’s impossible to find comfort in anything, not when there’s a gnawing in his bones that won’t stop, an itch he can never scratch, and the feeling of death always upon his shoulders. Sirius still falls asleep to shouts, but these are not drunks, not young people reveling in the night and the alcohol.  

_“PLEASE, SOMEONE, HELP, PLEASE LET ME OUT OF HERE!”_

_“I’LL KILL THEM I SWEAR!”_

_“LET ME GO! I’M SORRY— I’M SORRY!”_   

Some scream just to scream, just to hear the sound of their own voice, to know they still exist. Sirius doesn’t scream— not aloud, anyway. There’s screaming in his head. There is no mechanical din, no engines and no sirens. It’s just the pummeling of the sea and the hard, constant wind. Even the sky seems to be screaming. Sirius lives in permanent chaos of his own making.  

The years go by. His hair gets longer. He has no choice but to grow a beard. The changes go unnoticed, as he withers to his breaking point. He finally makes the screaming stop, by doing the only thing he’s ever done— by leaving.  

But he never escapes, not really.  

Sirius comes back to where he began, back to his city, back to the good carpet and the austere portraits. He stares out of windows and longs for the grunge, the muck, the cracked concrete. The neighborhood has changed, and so has he. The park is gone. The sirens still wail.  


End file.
